News In Brief

Turkey and Russia agreed on Wednesday that their next three-way summit with Iran to discuss the conflict in Syria will be held in Istanbul, a Turkish presidential source said.The source said Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russia's President Vladimir Putin also agreed in a telephone call to speed up the establishment of military observation posts in Syria's Idlib region, and discussed the humanitarian situation in eastern Ghouta, near Damascus.

Dy PM's affair with staffer grips Australia

AFP, Sydney

An affair between Australia's married deputy prime minister and a younger member of his staff, who is now pregnant, gripped the country Thursday, reigniting questions over MPs' private lives.Barnaby Joyce, leader of the National Party which rules in a coalition with the Liberals, is best known internationally for threatening to euthanise Hollywood star Johnny Depp's two dogs when they were brought into Australia illegally.

Macron's govt to boost military spending

AP, Paris

French President Emmanuel Macron's government is unveiling a bill to boost military spending, notably amid demands by NATO and U.S. President Donald Trump for European countries to pitch in more for their own defense.The bill being presented Thursday at a Cabinet meeting foresees 295 billion euros ($364 billion) in overall defense spending from 2019 to 2025. That includes 1.7 billion euros in additional spending each year through 2022, particularly to modernize equipment, improve cyberdefenses and intelligence.

US names 3 Pakistanis as "terrorist facilitators"

AFP, Washington

The United States named three Pakistanis on Wednesday as key "terrorist facilitators", saying they worked closely with a well-known backer of Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Taliban known as Shaykh Aminullah.The US Treasury placed Rahman Zeb Faqir Muhammad, Hizb Ullah Astam Khan, and Dilawar Khan Nadir Khan on its blacklist of "Specially Designated Global Terrorists," in an effort to disrupt the group's ability to obtain and distribute financing.